I Must Have Loved You
by CitronPresse
Summary: Derek thinks about Addison during an evening spent alone at the trailer. One shot, song fic. Pairing: Derek/Addison; Character: Derek


AN / Disclaimer: I do not own _Grey's Anatomy_ or its characters; lyrics are _Ghost Story_ by Sting. Reviews would be very much appreciated.

* * *

_I watch the Western sky  
The sun is sinking  
The geese are flying South  
It sets me thinking_

It's cold, cold and fresh and the sun is setting over the Pacific Northwestern landscape that frames his trailer. He has a cup of freshly brewed coffee in his hand and the delicious aromas of this and grilling trout fill his nostrils. There are piercing cries from above and he watches as a v-formation of Canada geese flies overhead. And just for a moment, for a respite in the mess of surgeries and emotional turmoil, Derek Shepherd is content. He had almost forgotten that feeling. But this solitude, this envelopment by nature and tranquility, this absence of others, gives him space to breathe. He gets up and stirs his small fire, watching the embers jump and spark and then die back into a more docile orange glow. The trout is done on one side, and he turns it over.

He's almost happy, but not quite, because he's never been quite the same and he's never been truly happy. Not since her. Not who she became, but who she had been, once, a long time ago. For a moment he feels a pang of regret. No, not regret; it's not enough to be called regret; only a hiatus, an omission, a small difference in his life that can't be retrieved. And for one moment, he's wistful.

_I did not miss you much  
I did not suffer  
What did not kill me  
Just made me tougher_

But he pulls it together. He doesn't miss her. It was to his benefit. He was getting complacent in New York. He only really knew two people; her and the adulterous sociopath he mistakenly called his best friend. Now he has new ground to conquer; new people to talk to; a new woman to love. He's a better man now. He's a stronger man. The tragic debacle of his marriage cleaned everything up; cut out the dead wood; like a forest fire, he thinks, as he looks around him. He takes a bracing breath of clean Washington air and tells his lungs that they're much better off without Manhattan, and his heart that it's much better off without Addison, and himself, once again, that he's a better man for what he went through.

_I feel the winter come  
His icy sinews  
Now in the fire light__  
The case continues_

_Another night in court  
The same old trial  
The same old questions asked  
The same denial_

_The shadows closely run  
Like jury members  
I look for answers in  
The fire's embers_

The trout eaten, he pours himself a scotch and sits by his fire watching the darkness creep in. The geese are gone and with them his self-congratulation. The scotch burns his throat and ignites his resentment and, in his mind, he recriminates. He's the victim, the plaintiff and she's the murderer of what they once were. They were Addison and Derek. They _were_. She was right, in the past tense. But, like most violent crimes, the destruction was over in a second and what had been was no longer and never would be again. Addison and Derek were dead and gone. She was culpable, she was guilty and her punishment had been a fitting one.

_Why was I missing then  
That whole December  
I give my usual line:  
I don't remember_

But he had been absent. And while he'd liked to make fun of her or minimize her or accuse her of nagging or, his favorite, pretend not to understand, she had not been wrong. He had drifted away from her, left her to her own devices, ignored her to work and sleep in on-call rooms, because he was pursuing a need to be the best. If he had committed a crime, it was this, a sin of omission. He can't quite remember what he was doing the year that her despair pushed her to actively commit her sin, but he knows, whatever it was, it conspicuously excluded her. She was right about that and, just for a moment, he feels profound empathy for her and it cuts through his heart.

_Another winter comes  
His icy fingers creep  
Into these bones of mine  
These memories never sleep_

_And all these differences  
A cloak I borrow  
We kept our distances  
Why should it follow I must have loved you_

He's struck by images of Addison running through his head like a slide show put on for his enlightenment. He sees with better clarity. Layers pull away from his concepts of why he withdrew from her, why he shrouded himself in indifference. Because all that time, while he ignored her; while he left her to fend for herself and distract her isolated heart with his best friend; while he abandoned her, disgusted and hurt and never wanting to see her again, he loved her. He must have. Otherwise there could be no reason for the ache in his heart that, however much he denies it, surfaces on quiet nights like this one.

_What is the force that binds the stars  
I wore this mask to hide my scars  
What is the power that pulls the tide  
I never could find a place to hide_

He had, at one time, been afraid to reveal himself to her. She sparkled and shone and he was just a boy from Connecticut who she pulled into her orbit. He was afraid that her stars and shine would show him for what he was. He was afraid he couldn't live up to her. That she had chosen him and continued, over and over to do so, made no difference. He had to be the driver of his achievement, his luster, he didn't want to borrow hers and he wanted to outshine her. And so, in making his own star ascendant, he dulled her and quenched her and made her a shadow of herself. And when this was accomplished and she reached out for a little borrowed warmth, he reviled her for her inability to live in the cold and dark that he had created and he made it just a little colder for all of them.

_What moves the Earth around the sun  
What could I do but run and run and run  
Afraid to love, afraid to fail  
A mast without a sail_

She had asked him to stay. She had wanted him to help her work it out, to navigate their way back to love. But he couldn't. He had to escape and he'd said and believed it was from her and what she'd done. But that is too simple and even he, from his position of judge and jury, knows this. The evidence was incomplete; he had still been afraid and fear had compelled him to run, physically and mentally. And it is only now, as he sits, in this damp, primal, pine-scented place that he's brave enough to recognize what he'd done.

_The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking  
Another day begins and now I'm thinking  
That this indifference was my invention  
When everything I did sought your attention_

_You were my compass star  
You were my measure  
You were a pirate's map  
A buried treasure_

He has sat here, outside the trailer all night, and the pink flush of the dawn is spreading across the wide, grey early sky. He has slept a little and he has dreamed and now he understands.

She had suffused him. She had flooded his mind and his body with sensations and feelings that shaped and would shape everything he did in life, everything he ever did with any woman. She, they, Addison and Derek had defined him. That they had become a sad soap opera of a failed marriage; that their story is now full of ordinary bitterness doesn't change its former splendor, its former tenderness. And ultimately, it's useless to deny it; it's necessary to admit it if he is to move on and make a new life. She had been the first; she had been astonishing; and he knows without the least doubt and despite the mask of his indifference that he had loved her and that the thought of her will catch, slightly, in his heart when he least expects it for the rest of his life.

_If this was all correct  
The last thing I'd expect  
The prosecution rests  
It's time that I confess: I must have loved you_


End file.
